IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tsy/journl/journl_tsy_er_2004_3_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

International trends in company tax rates — implications for Australia’s company income tax

Author

Listed:
  • James Kelly

    (Treasury, Government of Australia)

  • Robert Graziani

    (Treasury, Government of Australia)

Abstract

Worldwide statutory company tax rates have been declining. The choice of Australia’s statutory company tax rate is a balancing act, as Australia’s company income tax system has two basic roles. The first, to tax the income of Australian residents, is not affected directly by the international trend. The second, to tax the Australian source income of foreign investors, may be affected by that trend. Reducing Australia’s company tax rate (to reduce tax on foreign investors) could, but may not, improve national welfare by increasing foreign investment in Australia. Australia’s current statutory company tax rate is around the OECD average and is less than or equal to the rates in our major sources and destinations of foreign investment.

Suggested Citation

  • James Kelly & Robert Graziani, 2004. "International trends in company tax rates — implications for Australia’s company income tax," Economic Roundup, The Treasury, Australian Government, issue 3, pages 23-47, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:tsy:journl:journl_tsy_er_2004_3_2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://archive.treasury.gov.au/documents/930/PDF/02_International.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Devereux, Michael P & Griffith, Rachel, 2003. "Evaluating Tax Policy for Location Decisions," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 10(2), pages 107-126, March.
    2. Roger H. Gordon & Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, 1995. "Why Is There Corporate Taxation in a Small Open Economy? The Role of Transfer Pricing and Income Shifting," NBER Chapters, in: The Effects of Taxation on Multinational Corporations, pages 67-94, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Robert E. Lipsey, 2002. "Home and Host Country Effects of FDI," NBER Working Papers 9293, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Bartelsman, Eric J. & Beetsma, Roel M. W. J., 2003. "Why pay more? Corporate tax avoidance through transfer pricing in OECD countries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(9-10), pages 2225-2252, September.
    5. repec:fth:michin:359 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. de Mooij, Ruud A & Ederveen, Sjef, 2003. "Taxation and Foreign Direct Investment: A Synthesis of Empirical Research," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 10(6), pages 673-693, November.
    7. Hines, James R. Jr., 1999. "Lessons From Behavioral Responses to International Taxation," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 52(2), pages 305-322, June.
    8. Grubert, Harry, 2003. "Intangible Income, Intercompany Transactions, Income Shifting, and the Choice of Location," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 56(1), pages 221-242, March.
    9. Kinney, Michael & Lawrence, Janice, 2000. "An Analysis of the Relative U.S. Tax Burden of U.S. Corporations Having Substantial Foreign Ownership," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 53(1), pages 9-22, March.
    10. Gordon, R.H. & Mackie-Mason, J.K., 1994. "Why Is There Corporation Taxation in a Small Open Economy? The Role of Transfer Pricing and Income Shifting," Working Papers 359, Research Seminar in International Economics, University of Michigan.
    11. Slemrod, Joel, 2004. "Are corporate tax rates, or countries, converging?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(6), pages 1169-1186, June.
    12. Hines, James R. Jr., 1999. "Lessons from Behavioral Responses to International Taxation," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 52(n. 2), pages 305-22, June.
    13. Agnès Bénassy-Quéré & Amina Lahrèche-Revil & Lionel Fontagné, 2003. "Tax Competition and Foreign Direct Investment," Working Papers 2003-17, CEPII research center.
    14. Mills, Lillian F. & Newberry, Kaye J., 2004. "Do Foreign Multinationals’ Tax Incentives Influence Their U.S. Income Reporting and Debt Policy?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 57(1), pages 89-107, March.
    15. Grubert, Harry & Mutti, John, 2000. "Do Taxes Influence Where U.S. Corporations Invest?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 53(n. 4), pages 825-40, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. John Hawkins, 2006. "The Concept of Competitiveness," Treasury Working Papers 2006-02, The Treasury, Australian Government, revised Apr 2006.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gaëtan Nicodème, 2006. "Corporate tax competition and coordination in the European Union: What do we know? Where do we stand?," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 250, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    2. George R. Zodrow, 2019. "Capital Mobility and Capital Tax Competition," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: George R Zodrow (ed.), TAXATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE Selected Essays of George R. Zodrow, chapter 18, pages 543-570, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Devereux, Michael P. & Lockwood, Ben & Redoano, Michela, 2008. "Do countries compete over corporate tax rates?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1210-1235, June.
    4. Sven Stöwhase, 2005. "Asymmetric Capital Tax Competition with Profit Shifting," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 85(2), pages 175-196, August.
    5. Cooper, Maggie & Nguyen, Quyen T.K., 2020. "Multinational enterprises and corporate tax planning: A review of literature and suggestions for a future research agenda," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(3).
    6. Michael P Devereux, 2007. "Taxes in the EU New Member States and the Location of Capital and Profit," Working Papers 0703, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation.
    7. Michael P Devereux, 2007. "The Impact of Taxation on the Location of Capital, Firms and Profit: a Survey of Empirical Evidence," Working Papers 0702, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation.
    8. Haufler, Andreas, 2006. "Die Besteuerung multinationaler Unternehmen," Discussion Papers in Economics 1153, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    9. Assaf Razin & Efraim Sadka, 2007. "Productivity and Taxes as Drivers of FDI," Working Papers 172007, Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research.
    10. Michael Overesch & Georg Wamser, 2009. "Who Cares About Corporate Taxation? Asymmetric Tax Effects on Outbound FDI," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(12), pages 1657-1684, December.
    11. Aleksandra Riedl & Silvia Rocha-Akis, 2007. "Testing the tax competition theory: How elastic are national tax bases in western Europe?," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp112, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    12. Johannesen, Niels, 2010. "Imperfect tax competition for profits, asymmetric equilibrium and beneficial tax havens," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 253-264, July.
    13. Hristu-Varsakelis, Dimitrios & Karagianni, Stella & Saraidaris, Anastasios, 2011. "Equilibrium conditions in corporate tax competition and Foreign Direct Investment flows," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 13-21.
    14. Masaaki Kijima & Yuan Tian, 2013. "Investment and capital structure decisions of foreign subsidiary with international debt shifting and exchange rate uncertainty," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 36(2), pages 169-197, November.
    15. Peter Egger & Simon Loretz & Michael Pfaffermayr & Hannes Winner, 2006. "Corporate Taxation and Multinational Activity," CESifo Working Paper Series 1773, CESifo.
    16. Egger, Peter H. & Merlo, Valeria & Wamser, Georg, 2014. "Unobserved tax avoidance and the tax elasticity of FDI," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 1-18.
    17. Mr. Michael Keen & Mr. Murtaza H Syed, 2006. "Domestic Taxes and International Trade: Some Evidence," IMF Working Papers 2006/047, International Monetary Fund.
    18. Theresa Lohse & Nadine Riedel, 2013. "Do Transfer Pricing Laws Limit International Income Shifting? Evidence from European Multinationals," CESifo Working Paper Series 4404, CESifo.
    19. John Creedy & Norman Gemmell, 2010. "Behavioural responses to corporate profit taxation," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 193(2), pages 109-130, June.
    20. Assaf Razin & Efraim Sadka, 2006. "Vying for Foreign Direct Investment: A EU-type Model of Tax Competition," NBER Working Papers 11991, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Australia; company tax; corporate tax; foreign investment; taxation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F21 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Investment; Long-Term Capital Movements
    • H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tsy:journl:journl_tsy_er_2004_3_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: The Treasury (Commonwealth of Australia) (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/trgovau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.